VH-BSD de Havilland D.H.82A Tiger Moth
(c/n DHA1080)
In September of 1953 DCA sold three canopied
Tigers - VH-CAD/E & F. I was a member of
the
Tasmanian Aero Club at the time. "We" kept one of them
(-CAD) and the other two went
to the
Aero Club of Southern Tasmania in Hobart, after a short sojourn in
Launceston wherein
our Tiger guy
had overhauled them. Evidently the Hobart Aero Club picked up
VH-BSD in the
early
1960s, as evidenced by this rare shot from the late Peter Limon
collection (courtesy of Geoff
Goodall),
taken at Cambridge (Tasmania) Airport in 1962. VH-BSD was
the former VH-CAE
and
VH-AZJ and A17-749 before that. It wound up with the Drage's Air
World collection at
Wangaratta and is still registered to Joe Drage. Geoff Goodall
took a shot of it at Wondonga in
May
1973 (below) where it had just been rolled out of Joe's first
hangar. That's Joe in the cockpit.
Drage had
a rural property where he built a display hangar for his growing fleet
of vintage aircraft.
The
collection later moved to Wangaratta to a purpose built very large
hangar to become Drage's
Air World,
with a restaurant and bus station for Melbourne-Sydney bus lines -
quite a way to
generate
a captive audience for the aircraft museum! Unfortunately,
Drage's Air World closed
in 2003.,
although, as indicated above, Joe still owns this Tiger.